Chorley teenager imprisoned for Facebook jokes

I suppose we should not be surprised that the Tweet-police (formerly the British police) have now extended their remit to become the Facebook Police.

Today, getting caught for an actual crime is very rare in Britain. As anybody who has ever been robbed will know, most thefts are not even investigated by the police. It is even rarer for criminals – on the few occasions they are caught – to get sent to prison. How strange then that a 19-year old has just been sent to prison for three months for posting unpleasant jokes on his Facebook page.

The unemployed man from Chorley, Lancashire admitted to posting offensive jokes relating to the missing schoolgirls April Jones and Madeleine McCann. After being criticised for his comments by, among others, his own mother, it should have stopped there. He even wrote a message saying:

‘Sorry to my friends and family that have been brought into all this. I’m not a bad guy just took a joke to far I’ve apologised for what has been said and there’s nothing more what I can do sop all this s*** really aint going to sort anything nothing more to say on the matter apart from sorry again.’

But that was not enough.

The Magistrates’ Court in Chorley heard that members of the public ‘upset’ about the Facebook comments called the police. A ‘vigilante mob’ soon descended onto the youth’s home. The police removed him from his home for his own safety and arrested him. Now, in sentencing the teenager – who said he had been drunk while writing the posts – to three months in prison, JP Dr Bill Hudson told him:

‘This was a disgusting and despicable crime which the bench find completely abhorrent.